The Greater Good Science Center Resources for a compassionate and resilient society

2. The Greater Good Science CenterResources for a compassionate and resilient society Online Magazine: Find award-winning articles, parenting blog, videos, podcasts, and more at www.GreaterGoodScience.org Events: “TheScience of A Meaningful Life” Science: Research fellowships Books:Born To Be Good, The Compassionate Instinct, Raising Happiness, Are We Born Racist?

3. Taking in the Good Greater Good Science Center UC Berkeley October 15, 2011 Rick Hanson, Ph.D. The Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom www.WiseBrain.orgwww.RickHanson.net drrh@comcast.net

4. Topics • Perspectives • Brain basics • Grounding the mind in nature • Self-directed neuroplasticity • On your own side • The evolving brain • The negativity bias • Threat reactivity • Inner resources and implicit memory • Taking in the good • Heal old pain • Natural happiness

5. Perspectives

6. The history of science is rich in the example of the fruitfulness of bringing two sets of techniques, two sets of ideas, developed in separate contexts for the pursuit of new truth, into touch with one another. J. Robert Oppenheimer

7. Common - and Fertile - Ground NeurosciencePsychology Contemplative Practice

8. "We ask, 'What is a thought?’ We don't know, yet we are thinking continually." Venerable Ani Tenzin Palmo

9. Domains of Intervention • We can intervene in three domains: • World (including relationships) • Body • Mind • All three are important. And they work together. • We have limited influence over world and body. • In the mind: • Much more influence • Changes are with us wherever we go

10. Brain Basics

12. A Neuron

13. The Connectome - 2 Hagmann, et al., 2008, PLoS Biology, 6:1479-1493

14. Brain Basics • Size: • 3 pounds of tofu-like tissue • 1.1 trillion brain cells • 100 billion “gray matter" neurons • Activity: • Always on 24/7/365 - Instant access to information on demand • 20-25% of blood flow, oxygen, and glucose • Speed: • Neurons firing around 5 to 50 times a second (or faster) • Signals crossing your brain in a tenth of a second • Connectivity: • Typical neuron makes ~ 5000 connections with other neurons: ~ 500 trillion synapses • Complexity: • Potentially 10 to the millionth power brain states

15. Grounding the Mind in Nature

16. Evolution is a tinkerer. In living organisms, new capabilities are achieved by modifying existing molecules slightly and adjusting their interaction with other existing molecules. Science has found surprisingly few proteins that are truly unique to the human brain and no signaling systems that are unique to it. All life, including the substrate of our thoughts and memories, is composed of the same building blocks. Eric R. Kandel 16

19. All cells have specialized functions. Brain cells have particular ways of processing information and communicating with each other. Nerve cells form complete circuits that carry and transform information. Electrical signaling represents the language of mind, the means whereby nerve cells, the building blocks of the brain, communicate with one another over great distances. Nerve cells generate electricity as a means of producing messages. All animals have some form of mental life that reflects the architecture of their nervous system. Eric R. Kandel 19

20. The Mind/Brain System • “Mind” = flow of information within the nervous system: • Information is represented by the nervous system. • Most mind is unconscious; awareness is an aspect of mind. • The headquarters of the nervous system is the brain. • In essence then, apart from hypothetical transcendental factors, the mind is what the brain does. • Brain = necessary, proximally sufficient condition for mind: • The brain depends on the nervous system, which intertwines with and depends on other bodily systems. • These systems in turn intertwine with and depend upon nature and culture, both presently and over time. • And as we’ll see, the brain also depends on the mind.

21. Self-Directed Neuroplasticity

22. Fact #1 As your brain changes, your mind changes.

23. Ways That Brain Can Change Mind • For better: • A little caffeine: more alertness • Thicker insula: more self-awareness, empathy • More left prefrontal activation: more happiness • For worse: • Intoxication; imbalances in neurotransmitters • Concussion, stroke, tumor, Alzheimer’s • Cortisol-based shrinkage of hippocampus: less capacity for contextual memory

24. Fact #2 As your mind changes, your brain changes. Immaterial mental activity maps to material neural activity. This produces temporary changes in your brain and lasting ones. Temporary changes include: • Alterations in brainwaves (= changes in the firing patterns of synchronized neurons) • Increased or decreased use of oxygen and glucose • Ebbs and flows of neurochemicals

25. The Rewards of Love

26. Christian Nuns, Recalling Profound Spiritual Experiences Beauregard, et al., Neuroscience Letters, 9/25/06

27. Mind Changes Brain in Lasting Ways • What flows through the mind sculpts your brain. Immaterial experience leaves material traces behind. • Increased blood/nutrient flow to active regions • Altered epigenetics (gene expression) • “Neurons that fire together wire together.” • Increasing excitability of active neurons • Strengthening existing synapses • Building new synapses; thickening cortex • Neuronal “pruning” - “use it or lose it”

28. Lazar, et al. 2005. Meditation experience is associated with increased cortical thickness. Neuroreport, 16, 1893-1897.

29. Honoring Experience One’s experience matters. Both for how it feels in the moment and for the lasting residues it leaves behind, woven into the fabric of a person’s brain and being.

30. Fact #3 You can use your mind to change your brain to change your mind for the better. This is self-directed neuroplasticity. How to do this, in skillful ways?

31. On Your Own Side

32. The Power of Mindfulness • Attention is like a spotlight, illuminating what it rests upon. • Because neuroplasticity is heightened for what’s in the field of focused awareness, attention is also like a vacuum cleaner, sucking its contents into the brain. • Directing attention skillfully is therefore a fundamental way to shape the brain - and one’s life over time. The education of attention would be an education parexcellence. William James

33. The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy; I mean that if you are happy you will be good. Bertrand Russell

34. If one going down into a river, swollen and swiftly flowing, is carried away by the current -- how can one help others across? The Buddha

35. Self-Compassion • Compassion is the wish that a being not suffer, combined with sympathetic concern. Self-compassion simply applies that to oneself. It is not self-pity, complaining, or wallowing in pain. • Studies show that self-compassion buffers stress and increases resilience and self-worth. • But self-compassion is hard for many people, due to feelings of unworthiness, self-criticism, or “internalized oppression.” To encourage the neural substrates of self-compassion: • Get the sense of being cared about by someone else. • Bring to mind someone you naturally feel compassion for • Sink into the experience of compassion in your body • Then shift the compassion to yourself, perhaps with phrases like: “May I not suffer. May the pain of this moment pass.”

36. “Anthem” Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack in everything That’s how the light gets in That’s how the light gets in Leonard Cohen

37. The Evolving Brain

38. Evolution • ~ 4+ billion years of earth • 3.5 billion years of life • 650 million years of multi-celled organisms • 600 million years of nervous system • ~ 200 million years of mammals • ~ 60 million years of primates • ~ 6 million years ago: last common ancestor with chimpanzees, our closest relative among the “great apes” (gorillas, orangutans, chimpanzees, bonobos, humans) • 2.5 million years of tool-making (starting with brains 1/3 our size) • ~ 150,000 years of homo sapiens • ~ 50,000 years of modern humans • ~ 5000 years of blue, green, hazel eyes

39. Evolutionary History The Triune Brain

40. Three Stages of Brain Evolution • Reptilian: • Brainstem, cerebellum, hypothalamus • Reactive and reflexive • Avoid hazards • Mammalian: • Limbic system, cingulate, early cortex • Memory, emotion, social behavior • Approach rewards • Human: • Massive cerebral cortex • Abstract thought, language, cooperative planning, empathy • Attach to “us”

43. Home Base of the Human Brain When not threatened, ill, in pain, hungry, upset, or chemically disturbed, most people settle into being: • Calm - (the Avoid system) • Contented - (the Approach system) • Caring - (the Attach system) • Creative - synergy of all three systems This is the brain in its natural, responsive mode.

44. Some Benefits of Responsive Mode • Recovery from “mobilizations” for survival: • Refueling after depleting outpourings • Restoring equilibrium to perturbed systems • Reinterpreting negative events in a positive frame • Reconciling after separations and conflicts • Promotes prosocial behaviors: • Experiencing safety decreases aggression. • Experiencing sufficiency decreases envy. • Experiencing connection decreases jealousy. • We’re more generous when our own cup runneth over.

45. But to Cope with Urgent Needs, We Leave Home . . . • Avoid: When we feel threatened or harmed • Approach: When we can’t attain important goals • Attach: When we feel isolated, disconnected, unseen, unappreciated, unloved This is the brain in its reactive mode of functioning - a kind of inner homelessness.

46. Reactive Dysfunctions in Each System • Avoid - Anxiety disorders; PTSD; panic, terror; rage; violence • Approach - Addiction; over-drinking, -eating, -gambling; compulsion; hoarding; driving for goals at great cost; spiritual materialism • Attach - Borderline, narcissistic, antisocial PD; symbiosis; folie a deux; “looking for love in all the wrong places”

47. The Negativity Bias

48. Negativity Bias: Causes in Evolution • “Sticks” - Predators, natural hazards, social aggression, pain (physical and psychological) • “Carrots” - Food, sex, shelter, social support, pleasure (physical and psychological) • During evolution, avoiding “sticks” usually had more effects on survival than approaching “carrots.” • Urgency - Usually, sticks must be dealt with immediately, while carrots allow a longer approach. • Impact - Sticks usually determine mortality, carrots not; if you fail to get a carrot today, you’ll likely have a chance at a carrot tomorrow; but if you fail to avoid a stick today - whap! - no more carrots forever.

49. Negativity Bias: Some Consequences • Negative stimuli get more attention and processing. • We generally learn faster from pain than pleasure. • People work harder to avoid a loss than attain an equal gain (“endowment effect”) • Easy to create learned helplessness, hard to undo • Negative interactions: more powerful than positive • Negative experiences sift into implicit memory.

50. Negative Experiences Can Have Benefits • There’s a place for negative emotions: • Anxiety alerts us to inner and outer threats • Sorrow opens the heart • Remorse helps us steer a virtuous course • Anger highlights mistreatment; energizes to handle it • Negative experiences can: • Increase tolerance for stress, emotional pain • Build grit, resilience, confidence • Increase compassion and tolerance for others But is there really any shortage of negative experiences?